In light of deservedly bad polling numbers and obvious cognitive deterioration, we have all heard endless speculation even in liberal media that Democrats will drop Joe Biden as their November presidential nominee.

As observed by Politico, “A pervasive sense of fear has settled in at the highest levels of the Democratic Party over President Joe Biden’s reelection prospects, even among officeholders and strategists who had previously expressed confidence about the coming battle with Donald Trump.”

The left-leaning outlet goes on to report, “All year, Democrats had been on a joyless and exhausting grind through the 2024 election. But now, nearly five months from the election, anxiety has morphed into palpable trepidation, according to more than a dozen party leaders and operatives. And the gap between what Democrats will say on TV or in print, and what they’ll text their friends, has only grown as worries have surged about Biden’s prospects.”

Politico quotes an anonymous Democratic operative in close touch with the White House saying, “You don’t want to be that guy who is on the record saying we’re doomed, or the campaign’s bad or Biden’s making mistakes. Nobody wants to be that guy but Biden’s stubbornly poor polling and the stakes of the election are creating the freakout.”

According to a Siena College poll released last month, Biden led Trump among registered voters in deep blue New York by only by 9 points — 47% to 38%, whereas he won the state by 23 points four years ago.

Worse for Democrats overall, Biden is nationally under water with all demographic cohorts other than Black voters, where he is also losing strength, with a majority of Latinos (53%) and whites (54%) registering unfavorable opinions of him.

According to a Wall Street Journal poll, 57% of Black men plan to support Biden, compared to 30% who said they will vote for Trump.

“This shift would be catastrophe for Biden. Four years ago, 87% of Black men voted for Biden,” Donavan Wilson, a writer based Washington, D.C., wrote in an opinion piece published by The Hill.

In the same survey, 77% of Black women are planning to vote for Biden, while 11% plan on voting for Trump, down from 93% who voted for him in 2020.

As reported in The New York Times, it’s already too late for a viable primary challenger to enter the race, nor is there a mechanism for his party to replace him with another nominee unless he had a debilitating health crisis or drops out voluntarily.

If Biden voluntarily withdrew or dropped out due to a health emergency after accumulating a significant number of ballots, a new nominee would be selected on the Democratic National Convention floor in Chicago from Aug. 19 to 22.

After Biden wins a majority of pledged delegates, as he is virtually certain to do, then the party cannot simply decide to nominate someone else.

Under the Democratic Party’s delegate selection rules for 2024, pledged delegates are bound “in all good conscience” to their candidate on the first ballot at the convention.

If Biden were to drop out or be removed, Kamala Harris wouldn’t automatically become her party’s nominee, even as president, because she isn’t on any primary ballots and wouldn’t have accumulated any pledged ballots.

Nevertheless, despite broad unpopularity, she would become the most likely front-runner among convention delegates.

And don’t imagine for a moment that even though she typically polls even worse than Joe, she will relinquish that presumed nomination entitlement peacefully.

Regardless, The New York Times notes that in addition to Harris, “Democrats in search of a Biden alternative have floated plenty of party leaders — many of whom are widely seen as potential contenders for president in 2028.”

Prospective wannabees include sitting governors, such as Gavin Newsom of California, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, as well as people who ran in 2020, such as Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Cory Booker of New Jersey.

Nevertheless, it wouldn’t be an easy process for any of them because to appear on each state’s primary ballot, candidates must submit paperwork along with, in many cases, a hefty filing fee and hundreds or even thousands of voter signatures — and the deadlines for those submissions have already passed in most states.

Then, if no candidate received a majority on the first ballot, then and only then could the 738 unpledged delegates — commonly known as superdelegates — affect the outcome with ongoing voting to continue ballot after ballot until someone earned a majority.

None of those identified as likely nominees come anywhere close to gaining a required majority of delegates, nor against Donald Trump’s strong record on issues voters care most about and his enthusiastic and unified base.

Although enormously challenging with time running out and no strong bench of alternatives to replace him, Biden’s performance during the first of two debates with Trump less than two weeks away may determine whether a dismal last-chance replacement option is preferable over none at all.

Either way, all current election odds favor an American win.

Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 12 books is “Architectures Beyond Boxes and Boundaries: My Life By Design” (2022). Read Larry Bell’s Reports — More Here.

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